Piano Quartet in A minor / Fantasy String Quartet / Rhapsodic Quintet

Herbert Howells was the last of the great English Romantics whose tongues were loosened by folksong. He was born in Gloucestershire in 1892 and what Marion M. Scott wrote of Ivor Gurney: "his education may be said to have begun with the beauty he saw about him, the lovely countryside, the hills, the Severn river" is equally true of Howells. For him, as for Holst, Finzi, Gurney, C. W. Orr, Julius Harrison, and Vaughan Williams himself, the West of England country scene became a vital shaping force - we may easily feel that the colour and temper of all his finest creations have been quietly determined by it ...